Record company hikes Whitney Houston music price briefly

Within a half-hour of the news of Whitney Houston’s death, Sony Music raised the price of her greatest hits CD by 60 percent, so says the nextweb.com:

The Ultimate Collection album (released in 2007) rose from £4.99 to £7.99. Some iTunes users told DigitalSpy that as the price change propgated, the album became unavailable to download.

Immediately, users began accusing Apple of taking advantage of the singer’s death, ramping up pricing in order to profit from the announcement. By Sunday evening, the album had returned to its original price.

Thenextweb.com reported that Sony increased the wholesale price of The Ultimate Collection, which pushed up the retail price.

The Guardian.com quoted a Sony insider as saying “the price hike was not a ‘cynical’ move — but that the wholesale price … was wrong. The change in wholesale price boosted the album’s retail price on iTunes.

Despicable? Whatever. It’s the music business. The same industry types who Sunday night devoted lots of national TV time on the Grammys to a confessed woman-beater and approved whatever attempt at offense Nicki Minaj failed at during the Grammys.